Monday, July 29, 2013

I've gotten a bit nostalgic about my old Atari home computers so after unpacking them for the third time in as many weeks I decided to actually do something with them. The result is a new series of videos exploring gaming in the world of the Atari 8-bit.

So, aren't you glad that Microsoft didn't listen to all
those nervous Nellie's who petitioned to have the original Xbox 1 DRM put
back? The XBox Live outage apparently took a lot of subscribers by surprise on July 23rd around
noon Pacific time. The outage affected everything that had anything to do
with gaming and Windows. That means Xbox
live logons, Games for Windows (as if it wasn't bad enough when it did work)
and Windows Phone not to mention Windows 8.

This follows previous outages on June 20th, July 3rd and July 8th. Other outages weren't as long as this most
recent event which spanned the better part of 24 hours by some reports. While no specific details about the cause of
the outage were mentioned, Microsoft returned its Xbox status page to all
green status on Early Thursday morning.

So much for the cloud eh?
All those people that dismiss these kinds of events as trivial forget
how much turmoil they cause when they do happen. Cloud services are convenient but not a
given.

I've got a feeling Battlefield 4 is going to suck. The story isn't all that original for one
thing. I mean c'mon now, the Chinese teaming
up with the Russians were the best bad guys Dice could come up with? Now they're touting their updated Battlelogservice for its statistical and social features. I wouldn't buy a car based on the ability to
integrate with social networks and I wouldn't buy a game based on it either.

Focus Dice, focus!

Seems Microsoft is showing a little love to independent game developers who don't have a publisher for its
upcoming Xbox 1 console. In what's been
described as a reversal of policy, Microsoft's Corporate Vice President for
Xbox has promised Independent game developers access to the Xbox marketplace
and an equal footing with major game publishers.

"Our vision is that
every person can be a creator. That every Xbox One can be used for development.
That every game and experience can take advantage of all of the features of
Xbox One and Xbox Live. This means self-publishing. This means Kinect, the
cloud, achievements. This means great discoverability on Xbox Live. We'll have
more details on the program and the timeline at Gamescom in August.”

Reaction has ranged from cautiously optimistic to
suspicious. Sony and Nintendo currently
have similar indie friendly policies for game development on their respective
platforms. That means Microsoft would be
the odd man out if they didn't do likewise.

It was around this time last year that news broke that Vivendi, the majority stakeholder in
Activision/Blizzard, was looking to dump the software publisher to shore up its
own portfolio. This week Activision
announced that it was buying back $5.83 billion in shares (429 million) from then majority stakeholder
Vivendi. The move averted a potential
Vivendi raid on Activision's cash reserves of 3 Billion USD in what would have
been described as a "special dividend."

That could have left
Activision cash poor and in the worst case, potentially in a similar position
to the now defunct game publisher THQ. Activision
CEO Bobby Kotick and co-chairman Brian Kelly plan to purchase another 172
million shares for another$ 2.34 billion.
When it's all said and done Vivendi will only hold a 12% stake in the
company and no longer retain a controlling interest.

As much as I hate the antics of the huge game publishers, I
hate corporate leeches even more so this move is a very good thing indeed in my
book.

Finally,

About a week ago I picked up a really good deal during the
Steam Summer Sale. Poker Night 2 which launched
in April this year from Telltale games is unlike any video poker game you've
ever played. With characters from
Borderlands, Sam and Max, Evil Dead and the Venture Brothers it's like sitting
down to a friendly game with a few pop culture friends.

I don't even like poker and I'm loving this game. Oh, did I forget to mention GlaDos or Portal fame
is your dealer. The game is full of
one-liners, snappy wisecracks and hilarious cutscenes. The graphics are presented in a more anime
fashion similar to Borderlands 1.
Elements of the world of each of your opponents come into play with
every win earning you chips to change the look of the cards, table and chips. There's also 18 Steam achievements available
and after 2 hours of play I've already managed to rack up 8 of them.

There's two variations of play available; Texas Hold 'em and
Omaha. Side bets occur automatically as
do blind bets. Don't count on the antics
of any of the characters giving you a "tell" either. I've lost enough hands to learn that the hard
way.

I may not last 30 seconds in Vegas at a game of Texas Hold
'em but I'm sure I'll be spending many hours with Poker Night 2.

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

This video series goes through the evolution of personal video gaming from the viewpoint of my own gaming history. We start with my old Atari 800 and end up with the quickly vanishing physical media that digital delivery methods seek to replace. It's an evolution of getting less but paying more. Enjoy!

Saturday, July 20, 2013

This is going to be short mostly because I've spent all of
10 minutes with this game but there's good reason for that. By the way, In case you didn't read the title,
the game I'm referring to is Ridge Racer: Unbounded for the PC.

Let me start by describing the fantasy that I thought I
would be experiencing. Let me also admit
that I didn't pay enough attention to the Metacriticuser reviews. In my own defense, I
didn't see anything about my primary issue in the reviews, at least not right
up front.

My fantasy revolved around the infinitely playable Flatout
franchise in the examples of Flatout and Flatout 2. Those games were both produced by Bugbear and
were nothing less than a joy to play.
Even now after 7 years my friends and I still find them a guilty
pleasure every now and then. When they
were new, I played them so much that they almost became a career. One I gladly accepted, mind you.

Flatout 3, on the other hand, was an example of a bad developer ruining a
good franchise. Bugbear wasn't involved
and the result was akin to Caddyshack without Bill Murray. Oh yeah...that was Caddyshack 2 wasn't it?

Ridge Racer: Unbounded looked intriguing. It had an interesting premise, destructible
environments, and the ability to create your own tracks. If I couldn't hurl my driver through flaming
rings for distance at least I could have fun confounding my friends with custom
tracks and stuff that blew up.

So I expected the Ridge Racer experience would be at least
on par with Flatout even if there weren't any cool stunt competitions...

With all of that you probably would like to know what I'm
going on about, so here it is...

Control setup!

The game was released in 2012 and went on sale during the
Steam Summer sale for a fraction of its release price and now I know why.

Need For Speed, Grid 2, Even Split Second supported a
joystick and that was a pure console port!
So what the hell is wrong with you BugBear!

Yes, I'm one of those.
I didn't grow up gaming on PS or Xbox anything. I started gaming the
hard way on PC's and all of those used joysticks. The only thing close to a console I ever
played on was an Atari 800 computer and guess what, it had a joystick!

So if everyone else gets it where does anyone who demands a
$50 list price for a game get off sticking me with keyboard or gamepad control
for a driving game? I checked a few
forums and found an avalanche of wailing from gamers with USB Steering wheels
that had similar complaints. No support for wheels and no customization of controls no matter what you used. The $300 or
more they paid might as well have been tossed in the crapper during an
opportune flush with this game.

How can you have such promise and abandon a core component
of gameplay?

No, I'm not old and I will NOT get over it. You play racing games best with a wheel or a
joystick, period.

Gamepad controllers
are great for FPS's, RPG's and Little Big Planet but they stink for driving. That anyone would argue to the contrary quite
frankly has no clue what precise control is all about. Click, Click, Tap Tap and a vague piece of
rubber sticking up that looks like a female contraceptive trapped in a plastic
case just isn't the same.

With the triumph of BugBear's work on the Flatout series
(which completely supported joysticks) I simply can't comprehend how they let
this travesty get by with their brand on it.

I have a Windows Xbox controller, I also have a keyboard
which is my only other option for Ridge Racer, I won't be bothering with them because it's just not worth it.

Sadly, I
think I'll try to trade this game instead of suffer the indignity of trying to
make a square peg fit into a round hole.

I'd like to think I was at least a competent writer but you
never know until someone sees your work.
While I could probably add a paragraph to that "stormy night"
I probably wouldn't get much past that.
In fact it's likely I wouldn't have gotten past the second blog post.

They say the best writing comes from focusing on topics that
you care about. I hope I'm living up to
that old adage. I enjoy gaming and
writing and as time has passed it's become a symbiotic relationship.

Which is pretty much the reason I keep doing this. I have 3 blogs I maintain including this one
(digitaldynamic & info tech as i see itare the other 2) but this is the one most regularly
updated. The other two are less focused
but give me an outlet to write about something other than gaming.

Anyway...

So we've finally made it to 200. 200 posts on gaming topics that have run the
gamut from what it's like to be a mature gamer to the latest gaming news from around
the web. My first article was published
on January 19th, 2011 on Wordpress. It
was called "observations from a 40 something video gamer" and was my entry into the world of
gaming news and views.

I got great feedback on Wordpress but if you host on their
site the opportunity to make a few bucks was limited and I couldn't afford my
own hosting. I moved over to Blogspot,
signed up with Adsense and today I'm literally making 10's of cents per day!

I still update the Wordpress version of the site mostly
because there's more reader involvement and I appreciate the feedback. That I have more than 30 followers over there
amazes me. So long as someone's willing
to read this stuff, I'm willing to keep pumping it out. Thanks to all of you who care enough to
browse my ramblings every week.

Enough of that, on to the news!

So the San Diego Comic Con is going on till Sunday and while
it's no E3 the lines definitely blur between gaming and fantasy. Considering most of the most popular movies
and television shows in the past decade have been based on comics it's no surprise
that the event's become a barometer of pop culture. Games fit perfectly into the medium and any
game publisher or console maker would be remiss to ignore the event. Microsoft and Sony have gotten the message
and showed up with their next generation consoles showing off games like "Dead Rising 3" for the Xbox 1 and "Octodad:
Dadliest Catch" for the PS4 not to mention Batman: Arkham Origins for PC
and current gen consoles.

If you're into Cosplay and gaming you may want to think
about attending next time around.

"The world is on
the brink of chaos, China is the tinderbox and you and your squad are the
inadvertent spark that could ignite a global conflict"

That's the start of the latest blog post revealing the
storyline behind the upcoming Battlefield 4's Campaign. Here's the major plot point...

"Upon getting
back to the USS Valkyrie, a Wasp class carrier, the intelligence you’ve
retrieved confirms previous suspicions. The Chinese Admiral Chang is planning a
coup in China, and if this happens, the Russians would back him up."

So this time around it's not only the Russians but the
Chinese which I suggested a few months back.
The problem with the Battlefield series is that their running out of countries
to pick on. Let me make another
prediction. Battlefield 5 will probably
involve the Russians teaming up with France to liberate all our shoestring
potatoes. You will fight as Colonel R.
McDonald outfitted with his burning grease gun and modified rocket launcher
nicknamed, "Big Mac." You'll
be working for the super secret intelligence organization known only as, The golden arch.

At least we know it'll look good on your 60" 4K TV and
with product placements, probably come with coupons and few monopoly play pieces.

News a bit light this week again so to entertain myself I
decided to try out Steam on something other than

Windows. We all know that Steam is available for Mac
and Linux. What you may not know is that
it's only available for "some" of those platforms.

I've got an older laptop running PC Linux OS that I tried to
load the client on and I had success. At
least until I tried to actually log in.
Apparently the Steam client for Linux likes newer versions of Ubuntu
while the rest of the distros are left to their own devices. After messing around with it for a day I gave
up. I was never going to play a game on
the laptop anyway so it wasn't worth spending much more time with it.

After that I decided to try a less "open"
operating system that Steam would supposedly work with.

I've got an older G4 Mac Quicksilver that will never go past
OSX 10.4.11 (Tiger.) Considering this
rig is running an ATI Radeon 8500 I didn't expect to do much gaming but nonetheless
I was curious to see what the client experience would be like. This poor old Mac has never done any real
gaming outside of Railroad Tycoon and
even that was an exercise in patience.
In short, I didn't plan on doing anything more exciting than Bejeweled
on a web page.

Still, it would've been nice to at least vote in the Steam
Summer Sale or browse my friend's activities.
I say "would've" been nice because upon downloading the client
I was informed that it was incompatible.
Apparently Steam only runs on Intel based Macs (mine's a dual 1GHz
PowerPC).

So it's not enough to be on a Linux or Mac PC, you have to
be on the "right" PC. I have
to wonder how deep Valve's commitment really is to platforms other than
Windows. Considering that the bulk of gaming titles for these platforms aren't
exactly "cutting edge" why should the client need anything more than
the wares Steam is offering?

Thursday, July 18, 2013

It's the middle of summer and if you're a gamer you
undoubtedly know that Steam's big sale is on.
But what about the other guys? Maybe
you didn't know there was anyone else.

Well you probably already knew about Origin but since it's
nothing more than an EA outlet store it's not much of a comparison. Oh yeah, and they're not having a sale. $69.99 for Battlefield 4...sheesh..

Steam has many of the same selections as its competition but
also nurtures budding indie developers many of which come from its very active
communities. Community is central to
Steam's business model and one of the reasons a game like Portal could become so popular where it might not have otherwise. It's
one of the reasons why imitators have such a hard time duplicating Steam's
success.

There's deals to be had anytime of the year but the Holiday and Summer Sales are the best times to buy. Don't look for any recent triple-A titles from EA or Blizzard though. Seems Activision, 2K and of course Valve are the big publishers on the service not to mention their independent developer program.

So enough about Steam, let's see what's up with the
competition, if you can call it that. Discounts
are fairly uniform across all the portals and most have the same catalog as
Steam and then some.

Nothing to see here, just a few discounts on EA games nobody
plays anymore and constant prodding for pre-orders and DLC packs. Recent developments of the Origin client include
very Steam-like achievement points (that
don't mean anything) and game
updates integrated into the client.

Grade -- Meh

Green Man gaming
has a very Steam Like front page and the deals are similar. Oh yeah, and since EA isn't at war with them they have newer EA titles too but the prices aren't as good as Origin on EA
titles. No big sales right now either.

Grade -- Me Too

Good Old Games (GOG) is great for scratching that
nostalgia itch. Even without a sale most
of their wares are under $10 and some have been modified to work with newer versions
of Windows. There's Mac support
too. Their client isn't as intrusive as
Steam either. No big sales here though.

Grade -- Retro

GamersGate is
another very Steam like experience without the bloat. They currently have their own Summer Sale
going on with daily deals and rewards programs.

Grade -- Me Too 2!

Impulseis
GameStop's digital distribution portal and as such the deals aren't that
great. Most of their prices are full
retail on games that have been out for 8 months. They have forums like Steam but it's more of
an Origin Experience than a Steam experience.
No big sales going on right now either.

Grade -- Meh $$$$$

So there you are, copycats row with some copying the model
better than others. Seems like Steam
really does have the formula down. Truth
be told, Origin wouldn't rate a mention if they didn't have a few popular Triple-A titles (Battlefield, Crysis, SimCity.)
If you want to play them you're pretty much stuck plodding through the Origin
client. Not that Steam is much better
but at least I only have to click another tab to get to my games and not be
assaulted with sales pop ups.

By the Way...

Yes, I'm a bit biased against Origin. It's feature poor, buggy and a resource pig
that I'd rather not have to deal with. Every
rig I start the client on grinds to a halt when it starts up. All to support a single publisher who also
happens to be the 500 pound gorilla in the room.

Monday, July 15, 2013

The latest installment in the series of special events for the FPS, Killing Floor. This one's called "Pier of Pain" and runs from July 5th through July 23rd. The game is available on Steam during the Summer sale which is on till July 22nd.

Enjoy this lighthearted walkthrough with myself and another gaming friend as we take a stroll on the Pier of Pain!

Friday, July 12, 2013

I said last week that the Steam Summer Sale usually starts
around the time the Killing Floor Summer Sideshow event makes its appearance and
this year was no exception. " Pier of Pain" will continue till July
23rd but it isn't free to play anymore but c'mon you had a week to pick it up
for $3. It's still on sale for $9.99
which isn't a bad deal in itself.

The Summer Sale began on July 11th almost to the day it
started last year. This year's edition
features many of the same opportunities including daily, hourly and flash
sales. Voting makes a return as well
with related discounts generally in the 70% or better range. .

Also returning to this year's event is the occasional
"503" error on launching Steam when rabid gamers get a little
overexcited. If it happens to you just
think of it as delayed gratification.

New this year are the trading cards (badges) which are tied
to (discounted) game purchases, random "drops" based on ownership, crafting
of new "badges" and of course voting.

Borderlands 2 was on sale along with most of the DLC (as of
7-12). Grid 2, Bioshock Infinite and all
your favorites are either on sale or soon will be. Most were discounted 50% or more as of this
writing.

Daily deals generally run for 24 hours starting at 10AM with
incidental offers running for 8 hours or less.
The sale ends 10AM July 22nd.

The Steam Sale is dominating most of the news this week but
a rather amusing tidbit came from CNET. It seems Microsoft is trying to position the
Xbox 1 as a replacement for all that conference room videoconferencing and
multimedia clutter.

It sounds like something a gamer in an IT department would
come up with but the assertion isn't that far off base. The Windows 8 core, Skype, Skydrive, Wi-Fi and connectivity features do lend themselves
to conference and presentation
duties.

It appears the XBox 1 is aiming to be the device to rule
them all from the living room to the board room. Considering the console is more HTPC than
gaming console the crossover to business isn't a big stretch. Its capability and versatility could capture
a whole new segment of the market that could care less about Halo.

Here we go again...and again...

In the department of: Are you Freakin' nuts!

Seems some so-called "fans" of Microsoft's
original DRM policies want them back citing the desire to digitally store games instead of swapping
media and of course entering the always enticing land of Microsoft licensing.

"This was to be
the future of entertainment... A new wave of gaming where you could buy games
digitally, then trade, share or sell those digital licenses. Essentially, it
was Steam for Xbox. But consumers were uninformed, and railed against it, and
it was taken away because Sony took advantage of consumers uncertainty. We want
this back. It can't be all or nothing, there must be a compromise.”

Really guys?

For one thing, it's just a console and you're making it
sound like universal health care. That
beloved Steam Box is still in absentia and nobody knows for sure if it'll be
more Ouya or Xbox. What everybody got
upset about was effectively killing the secondary market and forced connection
to the Internet "Just Because."

Not to mention the often dismissed reality that not everyone
can afford upwards of $60 for a game or has reliable Internet
connectivity.

There's been speculation that this "petition" is
little more than a publicity stunt orchestrated by Sony to further tarnish the
Xbox 1. The only way that's going to
happen is if Microsoft flip-flops again.

Finally,

Steam really does dominate the news this week but the
rumblings from Redmond come in a close second.
Along with the potential for a new market for the Xbox 1 comes a new division head after the departure of Don Mattrick.

Following this week's companywide reorganization Julie
Larson-Green will take over the reins of the Xbox. If the name's familiar it's because she
occupied one of two spots created after the end of Steven Sinofsky's rule over
the former Windows division.

She oversees the new Devices
and Studios Engineering group that includes the Xbox and anything else with
a button and a Microsoft logo.

By the way, if you hate Windows 8 and the Office Ribbon you
can send your hate emails to her. She
was in charge of both of them.

Tuesday, July 9, 2013

You may have seen my video on Steam Cloud saves a few months back
where I showed you how to deal with the problem of the Steam cloud going
offline. In that video I basically
showed you where saved games and saved settings are stored locally.

Sometimes you have to dig a little deeper, however. Not all games follow the rules and end up
spreading their files in multiple locations.

So what do you do when the saved games aren't where you
expect them to be? Well, you get a
shovel but you do have some help.

The old fashioned way Steam saved games was within Steam's
own directory structure. It's ugly, full
of numbers and can be confusing but I'll give you a few tips to make it easier
to navigate.

First of all, you need to know where that super secret Steam
save directory is. The path looks
something like:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\userdata\31999578

That last directory full of numbers will likely be different
on your PC. It's part of the Steam
tracking that allows the cloud sync to find your profile and saved game
settings and sync them across different machines. The screen capture below is what my Steam
directory looks like...

All those numbered directories correspond to your installed
games in Steam. Nothing very descriptive
about them but this is where you need to be if you're worried about a Steam
cloud synchronization problem or corrupted saved games which can happen.

The best way to find specific game saves in the midst of
this numerical directory nightmare is to do a search at the top of the
directory tree as shown. Filter on the
date then choose the files/folders that match what you know to be the last good
game save.

Below shows A windows 7 search dialog based on date. Other versions of Windows similar...

And the result...

What you see in the example above are all the files within
the steam profile directory that were changed within the date(s)
specified. It may not be as obvious as a
directory called "SavedGames" in the windows user profile directory but once you know where to look it's not that
difficult.

In the example above there's actually a few files that begin
with "savedgamexxxx." Pretty
obvious what they're for. If you right
click on those files and choose "Open file location" you'll be taken
to the appropriate directory. Simply
copy the contents to a safe place and if things go wrong simply copy these
files back into this location.

The next time you start steam you may see a message about a
Steam cloud save conflict. Choose the
local files to ensure the recovered saved games are restored properly.

The Steam cloud was supposed to eliminate the problem of
game save portability but sometimes it fails.
This procedure will at least give you a chance to fix the problem and
correct cloud save corruption.

Friday, July 5, 2013

If you can remember what you were doing in 1995 (assuming of
course that you weren't in diapers) then there should be at least some small
memory of a game that was groundbreaking yet overshadowed by its contemporaries.

Around the time Doom was driving the office network guys
nuts and 3D gaming still looked like a first person version of Donkey Kong
there was Apogee's "Rise of the Triad. " Known for, the then
new, level- on-level design (that made Unreal Tournament possible), dynamic lighting and destructible in-game
objects it foreshadowed features we now take for granted in an FPS.

But it was never as popular as its rivals Doom, Quake and
eventually Unreal. Ironically, all of
them benefitted from Triad's many firsts.

So who cares, it's an old game but wait. Due out July 31st on Steam, Rise of the Triad
is back and it's been updated. Mind you,
the screenshots and game videos aren't exactly ground breaking and look like
something from a decade ago. Still, if
you enjoyed the original and wish you could play it in Windows 7 your wish may
have been granted. Both Single and
Multiplayer (but no co-op) game modes are available.

Steam is offering a pre-order of the game for $14.99 with a
4-pack available for $44.99. Both of
those offers include the Apogee Throwback pack consisting of 4 classic games in
addition to Triad.

So Steam's Summer Sale hasn't happened yet but you know it's
coming. It usually follows the latest
installment of Killing Floor's Summer Sideshow.
This year's installment is entitled "Pier of Pain" and the
entire game can be played for free till July 11th. But at 3,99 why not just pick it up. It's good old zombie blasting fun without any
of the commitment. Well aside from the
new "Objective mode" but this is Killing Floor not Battlefield
3. So try it out, pick it up and start
shootin' and scootin'.

Seems Steam has all the news this week especially if you're
into retro gaming. Is Final Fantasy your
thing? Then the release of Final Fantasy 7 for $11.99 may be right up your alley. It's available now and that's all that's
worth saying about it.

Now let's take a look at the month behind us...

June was actually a fairly quiet month except for E3. We finally got concrete details on the next
generation of consoles from Sony and Microsoft and a few surprises as well.

E3 finally gave us the price for the Xbox 1, $499 and in a
surprise move $399 for the PS4. It also
showed us the power of public opinion when Microsoft reversed its official position
on DRM for the XBOX 1 but only after Sony touted its much more relaxed DRM and
secondary game market position.

That move and the $100 price drop at the last minute before
E3 made the PS4 the apple of the console gamers' eye, for now.

The price, however, may be more than they planned for when
the PS4 finally hits the retail outlets.
Seems Sony's price cut came at the expense of the camera bundle. Roughly the equivalent of the Microsoft
Kinect Sony may have thrown a wrench into its developer network and its
customers. If most PS4 titles end up requiring
the camera, consumers will end up having to pay the extra $100 anyway. At least the games won't be any more
expensive. Both companies committed to
the current consoles $60 price point.

June saw the release of two new discrete and one mobile GPU
from Nvidia (the 780, 760 and 780M respectively)

Intel finally released the first Haswell CPUs . With better power efficiency and performance
Haswell PGA designs are the new darlings of the enthusiast market even if the
processors are actually very much in the mainstream. Unfortunately Intel has decided to continue
the practice of limiting features of K series processors that started with Ivy
Bridge. Related posts below...

Nvidia released Shield and priced it at $299. The new android based game device/controller
may be the greatest product in search of a market to show up in the last
decade. Time will tell if Nvidia's read
the tea leaves correctly.

So pretty much E3 and hardware dominated the news in
June. So far, July seems to be focused on retro
games and an impending Steam sale.